During a press event this past week, we here at Nuke The Fridge had the fantastic opportunity to try out several games from Bandai Namco. In the center of the room was the latest installment of the Naruto series, and from a casual anime fans perspective, it’s pretty entertaining. Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker is a new title coming soon that features 4 vs 4 team based gameplay, we got to try out the 4 vs 4 capture the flag mode featuring Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, and a few randomly created characters showing off some of the variations that one can create while making their own character.
First off, graphically, the game looks on point from the characters to the environments. The game focuses more on two sides of a map with basic capture the flag rules. Each character has their own attribute that helps with creating teams and strategies. From the build that we got to try there was ‘Attack, Defense, Range, and Healing’. I was always on attack, using Kakashi sensei and his attack to sprint to the other side of the map to capture the flag, destroying anyone who got in my way. Movement felt fluid with the ability to sprint on walls which made me feel like a badass. The jumping mechanic was also very fun, holding a button can increase your jump which can help getting across large gaps during some tricky times during a match. It feels so rewarding to charge a jump and clear half of the map on your way to stealing a flag.
During one of my few rounds with 8 players, I found myself using teamwork to prevent any of the enemy team to grab our flags. There was yelling during our time on, but there was also a lot of communication keeping the ship from sinking. During the 3 rounds that we played, two of them ended in a draw and had me blood thirsty for a tie breaker. I have not felt this level of cooperative teamwork and competition in a while so this game definitely has a lot going for it especially since this is just one mode of a much larger title.
From my time with Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker I had a lot of mixed feelings playing this. I was never a large fan of Naruto, the last game from Naruto that I had played was Naruto Clash of Ninja for the Gamecube, but this game is not like any other. Depending on the other game modes, Naruto To Boruto is striking a good balance of casual online multiplayer and fan service that will make every fan of the series excited to release their inner Ninjutsu.
Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker will be coming to Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2018.